


Sociopath

by sylviarachel



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, POV John Watson, amateur psychiatry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 18:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1008373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylviarachel/pseuds/sylviarachel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Tell me something, Mycroft. Who told your brother he's a sociopath?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sociopath

"Tell me something," John says. It's an effort to keep his voice even, reasonable, but he manages it, he thinks. "Who told your brother he's a sociopath?"

Mycroft smiles in that way John hates. One of the ways John hates: there are several. "You've met him," he says. "What do you think?"

"What I think," John says, "is that whoever gave him that diagnosis was a blind, blundering idiot who should have his licence to practise psychiatric medicine permanently revoked."

"Ah." The smile twists. "But that would require that he actually have one."

John blinks as the implications of this remark start to sink in. "You're saying ... you're saying he diagnosed _himself_. And you _let_ him."

"John." He hates that patient tone even more than the stupid smile, if that's possible. "You know Sherlock. Do you honestly suppose there would have been any point in my attempting to argue with him about it?"

"He's not a sociopath," John says. "I don't know what diagnosis would be appropriate, if any, but absolutely not that one. He's not a sociopath -- he's just ... _Sherlock_."

"Yes," says Mycroft. "That is rather the difficulty, isn't it." He takes a slow, deliberate sip from his cup of tea.

John's matching cup is cooling untouched at his elbow; he's not willing to concede anything to Mycroft just at the moment, not even basic hospitality. "What do you mean by that?" he asks.

Mycroft is silent for a long moment, staring distantly at, or not at, something over John's left shoulder. Considering, John concludes; deciding? He wonders whether he's actually getting better at observing, under Sherlock's influence, or whether he's just imagining he is.

Finally Mycroft replaces his cup in its saucer, very deliberately, and folds his hands on his desk. John notices how much they are and are not like Sherlock's, and resolutely returns his gaze to Mycroft's face. The man is, for most practical purposes, his brother-in-law, even if he's also the British Government; John ought to be able to at least look him in the eye.

"Doctor Watson," Mycroft says. "You will give me your word that what I am about to tell you will not leave this room."

And just like that, John's medical instincts -- and his combat reflexes, too -- are on high alert. What, he wonders distantly, does that reaction say about his relationship with Sherlock?

"If that's code for 'Don't tell Sherlock'," he says, "I'm not making any promises without knowing what I'm agreeing to. You can't honestly think I would."

There's another Mycroft-smile, the one that means he finds John both pathetic and, in spite of himself, rather endearing. "When I first met you, John," he says, "I predicted that you would be the making of my brother, or would make him worse than ever. I am still not certain which prediction was correct."

With an effort, John forces his hands flat on the arms of his chair. "I'm your brother's best friend," he says. "I'm your brother's partner. In every sense but the strictly legal one, I'm _married_ to your brother. If you think I'm going to keep secrets from him--"

"You must be aware that he has always kept secrets from you."

"That's ..." He's not going to say _that's different_ , because although in a way it is, in another way it's not, and if he's learnt to live with it that doesn't stop him hating it. The question is always there, lurking below the surface of his conscious mind: _If Sherlock could let me believe he was dead for two fucking years, what else is he capable of keeping from me?_ "He has, and he does, and I wish he wouldn't, and that doesn't justify me doing the same fucking thing to him."

The choice of expletives is deliberate: Mycroft's almost never unguarded enough to actually flinch, but the desire to flinch is definitely there behind his chilly blue eyes.

"You ... care about him," Mycroft says. "Presumably you wish to act in his best interests?"

"Of course I do," says John. "I just don't think I trust _you_ to decide what his best interests are."

Mycroft sits back in his chair as if he's scored a point of some kind. "And yet you do trust me to explain his psychology to you."

"No-o," John says. "Not necessarily. You know things about Sherlock that I don't, things you think explain what made him decide he's a sociopath, and I can't know whether you're right without knowing what those things are."

They stare at each other for what seems to John like a very long time, although that could just be because any given five minutes alone with Mycroft Holmes tends to seem to John like five hours. Once upon a time -- before John survived medical school, basic training, Afghanistan, and Sherlock Holmes -- Mycroft might have won this ridiculous primary-school staring contest; but that was then and this is now, and eventually, finally, Mycroft folds, covering his defeat with another sip of tea.

"I must ask, however," he says, "that you tell no one else."

"Done," says John. No sense in wasting time being offended.

Another sip of tea.

"Doctor Watson," Mycroft says. "John. I'm sure you understand that I do not find this conversation ... pleasant."

Translation: I love my little brother, even though I think he's a dreadful mess, and I'm about to tell you something very bad about him.

"I don't expect I'm going to enjoy it, either," John offers.

"Indeed. Well." Mycroft steeples his long fingers, Sherlock-like, and John abruptly wonders whether Sherlock learned that characteristic gesture from his big brother, and if so, what it means that he does it anyway.

They sit in silence for another very long (or possibly not very long) moment, during which John lets Holmesian childhood scenarios run wild in his head. This time John's the one to cave, at least outwardly: "Okay, look," he says. "How about I make some ... _deductions_ , and you can tell me if I'm right, yeah?"

This has worked on Sherlock a time or two, he reasons; maybe it'll work on Mycroft, too. And it does, although Mycroft doesn't look grateful for the out.

"Here's what I think," John says, self-consciously easing back in his chair to make sure he's presenting as Cuddly Jumper-Wearing Doctor John Watson and not as Captain John Watson, Who Has Killed People. "I think Sherlock is a passionate, driven person who was hurt so badly so many times by people he loved" ( _starting with you, maybe_ , he thinks but doesn't say) "that eventually he decided he had to protect himself."

He pauses, looks at Mycroft. Gets no reaction; goes on.

"Now, there are a lot of ways a person could go about doing that, but Sherlock had his big brother to help him, didn't he -- to tell him all the time how much better his life would be if he would just stop _caring_ so much. Caring what people said, caring how people felt, caring whether people lived or died." John looks steadily at Mycroft. "Fucking hypocrite."

Mycroft blinks.

"And he _believed_ you," John continues. "He thought, he honestly thought, he should be able to just ... not care. Just like that. And when he couldn't stop caring -- there aren't a lot of things he cares about, I'll admit that, but those things, Mycroft, he--"

John pauses, unclenches his hands again, gets his voice under control.

"When he couldn't turn himself into a ... a supercomputer, he reckoned he was a failure, he thought success was shutting out everything and everyone he cared about and he'd failed. 'A chemical defect found on the losing side' -- hmm, wonder where he got that idea?"

Mycroft still doesn't say anything, but the _way_ he doesn't say anything suggests to John that he's struck a nerve.

"So ... illegal drugs. Cutting. Semi-anonymous sex."

_That_ gets a reaction out of Mycroft, although it's a Mycroft-style reaction, so, practically undetectable. Only Sherlock, generally speaking, can provoke irritation that's visible to the untutored eye.

"Yes, I did just say 'semi-anonymous sex'," John says, just to watch him squirm some more.

"Those were all things he did because he was bored, or because he was trying to turn his brain off, or both," he continues, slowly. He's thinking this through as he goes, trying to reason the way Sherlock would, but also to feel what Sherlock might have felt -- which, knowing Sherlock as he does, is actually much easier. "But they were also things he did because they helped him forget the way other people made him feel, or gave him a different kind of pain to focus on, a kind he could understand, that he could manage better." He looks Mycroft square in the eyes. "How'm I doing so far?"

"Your analysis," says Mycroft, with evident reluctance, "is surprisingly insightful."

John nods, deciding (again) to ignore the implicit insult, because you never got anywhere with Holmeses if you didn't. "Those things didn't work as well as he'd expected, either," he says, feeling his way, "but then he discovered he could stave off the boredom with the detective work, at least some of the time, provided he stayed off the coke, because the Met wouldn't let him in if he didn't. So far, so good. But he still had that voice in the back of his mind telling him he'd always be lonely and unhappy unless he learned to stop caring about people, and the less time he spent getting high, the more he needed something to ... insulate him. From things like Donovan calling him 'Freak' and Anderson calling him a psychopath and people like Sebastian fucking Wilkes being ... well. Doesn't matter. And since Sherlock's a genius with absolutely no sense of proportion, and also a colossal idiot, and he doesn't do anything halfway, he decided he'd really do it this time."

It's becoming a little too vivid, the mental picture he's composing of a younger, lonelier, more desperate Sherlock. Sherlock without John. He takes a few deep breaths to calm down.

"I can imagine him thinking, _if you tell everyone you're a sociopath, nobody will expect anything but the worst of you, so you can never disappoint them, and nobody will think they can get under your skin, so they won't try_. Only it backfired on him, didn't it, because presenting yourself as a sociopath doesn't actually stop you feeling things, but it does make other people less careful about what they say. And the uglier it got, the more he threw himself into being a sociopath, and started deleting everything that made him remember he wasn't one."

"I have often thought," Mycroft says, almost wistfully, "that he might have been much happier if he had succeeded."

John's prepared to take a lot of shit from Holmeses if he needs to, but this is just one shovelful too many. "You're wrong," he says. "You're dead wrong. And even if you weren't -- _fuck you_ , Mycroft Holmes."

Mycroft gives him what John can only interpret as a pitying look.

"So," says John, after a few silent, hostile minutes. "What else were you going to tell me? What have the two of you got in your mutual past that's worse than you selling him out to Moriarty, and worse than persuading him to try and turn himself into a sociopath?"

The silence lengthens. John's not going to cave this time; Sherlock's happily employed in the lab at Bart's, and Molly knows to text John if he leaves: John's got nothing to hurry away for. And if Mycroft doesn't want to talk about it this much, he reckons it must be important.

Finally, finally, Mycroft says, "How  much has my brother told you about his childhood?"

"As little as possible, I think," John admits. "He's not much for reminiscing. I imagine it was a bit ... lonely."

He's imagined it often -- Sherlock young, vulnerable, awkward and unsure, without even the dubious armour of his belief in his own intellectual superiority. Sherlock at the mercy of people like Sebastian Wilkes, honing his razor of too-intimate deductions on the principle of _get them before they can get you_. It makes him feel sick, and sorry, and -- sometimes -- irrationally guilty for not being there yet to help Sherlock navigate the world of people who don't tell the truth and don't want to hear it.

But he's not about to tell Mycroft any of that, even though Mycroft, he suspects, actually was, in his extremely fucked-up Holmesian way, trying to help.

"I expect it was," says Mycroft. John tries to parse his tone: regret? distaste? ... sympathy? "You must understand, Mummy wanted another child very badly; but sometimes the child one wants is not exactly the child one gets."

_Oh. That one._ John understands that one: the way their parents' disappointment in Harry (alcoholic, gay, perpetually changing careers) warped the whole family around itself, until invading Afghanistan to get away from the situation seemed like a perfectly sensible idea. John feels a spark of unexpected and not particularly welcome sympathy with Mycroft -- until he remembers who they're talking about.

"So Sherlock wasn't as perfect as his oh-so-perfect big brother," he says, not caring how angry and bitter he sounds, "and that ruined everyone's life, and you all took it out on him?"

Mycroft's quiet, calm reply stops his momentum cold: "From Sherlock's perspective, yes. Precisely that."

"You're serious." John sits back in his chair. "So ... what kind of life-ruining are we talking about, here?"

Mycroft sips his tea, which must be stone cold by now. "Sherlock was not an easy child. It was not discussed at the time, of course, but I believe our mother must have suffered fairly serious postnatal depression; our father ... Well." This is the smile that means Mycroft is deeply uncomfortable and wants to pretend he isn't. "Let us say that my brother's addictive personality did not arise out of a clear blue sky."

_It's your personality, too, Mycroft. You're just addicted to more socially acceptable things._

"When Sherlock was seven years old, there was an incident at his school, and my parents were asked to remove him. It is unclear exactly what happened--" Mycroft looks frustrated at this-- "but I gather that it occurred in the small hours of the morning and involved fire--"

"Hang on," John interrupts him. "Sherlock was at boarding school when he was _seven_?"

"Sherlock was at boarding school when he was five," Mycroft corrects, gently. "As I have said, he was not an easy child. My parents felt the school might be better able to handle him."

"I handle him just fine," John mutters. Then he realizes how that sounds, and wishes he hadn't.

"He dove off a three-storey building right in front of you, and pretended to be dead for two years," says Mycroft, still in that gentle tone, and, much as he hates it, John has to admit that this is a really good point.

"So ... this 'difficult' seven-year-old manages to set fire to something in the middle of the night," John says, "and the school decide they don't want him anymore, either. Then what?"

"Father set out in the car to fetch him," Mycroft says. "He never arrived. The car was found the following day; the police surgeon told us that he had died on impact, but in all likelihood he was prevaricating to spare Mummy. His blood-alcohol level was ... well. Sherlock ..."

John imagines Sherlock (a skinny little boy, he imagines, with wild hair and wild eyes, and his school tie stuffed in a pocket because he doesn't want to wear it) waiting in an office, or on a bench somewhere, for his parents to collect them -- waiting, waiting, beginning to wonder -- deducing, finally, that the school don't want him anymore and his parents don't either...

"Sherlock concluded that no one was coming," Mycroft continues, after a moment, "and ... struck out on his own. I have never discovered where he thought he was going; possibly he intended to emulate the redoubtable Jim Hawkins, because when we finally located him, it was because he had been caught picking the lock of a shipping company's goods shed in Liverpool. I expect the owners might have pressed charges, despite his tender years, had he not been suffering from advanced hypothermia at the time."

"What?!" John sits up, horrified.

"It was February," Mycroft explains. "He had been missing for more than a fortnight, and he had left all his things at school, all but his violin. For the next eighteen months he refused to speak to anyone, and I have never succeeded in discovering how he spent those two weeks. So you see, perhaps, why I have made a habit of keeping him under ... _surveillance_ is such an ugly term, isn't it? Under my eye."

"What changed?" John asks, partly because he wants to know, but mostly to distract himself from the mental image of a dark-haired little boy, blue with cold, picking locks with frozen fingers.

"I beg your pardon?"

"After eighteen months, what changed?"

Mycroft looks genuinely sad. It's unnerving. "I took away his violin," he says, "and refused to return it until he asked for it aloud."

John isn't sure whether this is the cleverest or the cruelest tactic Mycroft could possibly have devised. Eventually he decides it's both.

"When he plays at you instead of talking," he says, "he's reminding you. I get it now."

"So," says Mycroft, who's now come to the bottom of his tea, it looks like, "now you know. May I inquire what you intend to do now?"

John doesn't answer right away, because quite frankly he has no idea. It wouldn't be entirely true to say he's sorry he asked, but it's certainly true that the answers he got have only raised more questions. Such as, for a start, _What the bloody hell do I say to Sherlock?_   Clearly not _You'll never guess what your brother told me today, while you were at the lab_ , and clearly not _Sherlock, what_ did _you d_ _o while you were missing for two weeks when you were seven?_ But knowing about this and saying nothing is unthinkable.

"I think," he finally says, "I think I intend to go home, hug Sherlock very very tight, and ask him if he'll get out his violin and play me his very favourite thing in the world." He looks at Mycroft. "Because he is my very favourite thing in the world. And we'll see where that takes us."


End file.
